Just when you were starting to get used to your Facebook business page, Facebook pulled one of its regular tricks and decided to change everything on you again!

We feel your pain so here is a quick update on what’s happening with Timeline introduction for your business pages.

Deadline for changeover

You can publish your new look now, but you have until March 30 to play around with it before you have to hit publish. Don’t stress about making the change too quickly - you have time to figure it out, what you want it to look like and get used to the idea.

Cover photo

Timeline gives you the opportunity to put in a big gorgeous photo to represent your page. It’s sleek and gives you a lot of room (851px x 315px) to really brand the feel of your page.

There are, however, a LOT of rules for this image. Rules like no url to your site or calls to action that have thrown most of us for a loop!

Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”

Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section

References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features

Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

Tabs and landing pages

Our big line before this week was that you need to give people an incentive for liking your page and you need to make it loud and clear using calls to action and a custom landing page.

With the changes you can no longer do any of that. We’re going to have to learn to be creative with the new rules.

The tabs now appear right under your main photo - as you can see in the example below, the coupon code you get for liking Blend Creations and their montly contest are both front and centre on the page - far more obvious than they were on the old page, even if you can’t force anyone to a specific landing page any more.

What does it all mean?

There’s lots to learn and we’ll be talking more about Timeline over the coming weeks. We’ll cover topics that show you how to feature certain items by pinning posts to the top of your timeline and how to re-order your apps (to feature them under your main cover image).

For now, start by playing around with timeline. Come up with a great cover image that shows off who you are and what you do. Just remember not to include any calls to actions, discount offers or your url.

Choose a smaller profile image photo - that’s the image that will be showing up next to your name when you post as your page and on mobiles (timeline hasn’t come to mobile for business pages yet). We used our logo.

There are a lot of businesses that have already changed their pages over and they’re looking great! As the weeks pass all kinds of businesses will come up with great new ways to use timeline. There are lots of exciting things to come!!